After I've given the record a couple spins my favourite tracks so far are Demons, Josephine, Out Of Breath and Love Forty Down. And I'm still loving Get Better, The Next Storm and Mittens a lot.

A_2015 wrote:Ive had acoustic version of Demons playing for the last hour on repeat. The rawness of the lyric 'you're not delivering a perfect body to the grave, and time is not there to be saved. Life is a holiday, a moment stolen from the black, before the demons drag you back.' Definite shivers and hair standing up on back of neck moment.

Same here. These are some of my favourite lines of the record.

lambeek wrote:Wailed like a baby on hearing Song For Josh - such a truly heartbreaking song. Not sure that will be something I can listen to regularly, until I can hear it in public without sobbing.

I thought the same thing after hearing Song For Josh a couple times and crying every single time. Definitely an addition to my "songs not to listen to in public" list. Though I'm slightly making progress.

What else... The Angel Islington is the perfect start, The Opening Act Of Spring got me to sing along on first listen and the acoustic CD is just perfect.
I can't wait for my CD to arrive so I can have a better look at the lyrics.

After further listening, Glorious You, Out of Breath and Josephine are the ones nestling in my heart. I think Out of Breath is my new mantra, and I'm working on a tattoo design and hoping to incorporate a lyric from PS4NP somewhere. Possibly from the Next Storm.

Bonus: I found Mittens on the jukebox of our local whilst playing Pool yesterday, so everyone got treated to a listen to that

So , the errie and excellent "The Silent Key" - is it autobiographical?

There is a verse that states:

Four thousand nautical miles as the crow flies away
A home made ham radio
In the loft of a Hampshire family home
Came alive, came alive, came alive
And so the four year old amateur operator thus became the only person to hear
Christa's last desperate communique
"We''re alive, we're alive, we're alive"

Frank was born in December 81 and the event took place in January 86 so Frank was 4. He is from Winchester in Hampshire.

Space shuttles are a bit of a specialist subject, so I can clarify a bit.

No broadcasts were sent or received after the break-up of the orbiter Challenger. There is a particularly nasty bit of journalism purporting to be the crew's post-explosion conversation, published in some sensationalist US papers in the 80s, which is a fake (and published in the kind of papers that aren't very serious). Frank's song is very transparently a piece of imagination, as he says, and I imagine he has no wish whatsoever to associate it with any dumb tasteless nonsense like that.

It is highly likely that at least some of the Challenger crew survived for (as the song says) nearly three minutes after the break-up (until they hit the sea at very high speed), because the crew compartment remained intact up to that point, and some of the crew's emergency oxygen supplies were activated. There is a pretty thorough study that you can find easily on NASA sites. It's a common feature of both shuttle fatal crashes that the crew compartment remained intact, even though in the spacecraft's design it was always assumed that any major malfunction would cause complete break-up. It is possible that some in-flight recordings post-accident were recovered but thankfully if they have, they have remained out of public view.

I suppose you can view this as quite horrifying, or (like Frank) you can imagine that having a brief chance to confront life and death might be perhaps a blessing. It's impossible for any of us to know, but it's fair to imagine. It was a sentiment nicely captured in Ronald Reagan's speech on the evening of the accident quoting McGee's poem - "Oh I have slipped the surly bonds of earth... and touched the face of God".

Beautiful song.

Last edited by Third Rate Les on Fri Aug 14, 2015 12:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Received the new album about a week ago from Amazon, and just got the deluxe double CD in the mail today from Frank's website. This is THE best time for music lovers. When you get a copy of new music by one of your favorite artists.... the first 20 or 30 plays are magical. Songs stick in your head and nuances are noticed and opinions are formed. You find yourself trying to explain certain songs to your wife or your friends, and you don't even realize they think you've gone bat-shit insane. LOVING IT!